Meet the team!

It originally took me awhile to get everyone's names down, but now that I have (for the most part), I thought I'd give a little rundown of each girl, including how you say their name (or how I think it's said), what position they play and any other info so you can get to know my team that I'll surely be talking a lot about in all my posts.

• #5 Milda (Mill-duh): small guard, back-up point guard. Quick and very smart
• #7 Ausra (Ow-shra): 2 or 3. Smooth, quick guard. One of my favorite players to watch/play with. Reminds me of Theresa Lisch (er...Meacham :) ).
• #8 Indre (In-druh): taller 2 or 3. Fastest person on the team no doubt.
• #9 Rima (Rim-uh): small point guard, runs the team well, team captain. In her 30s, married with an 8 year old son. Probably speaks the best English on the team and acts as my translator a lot.
• #10 Aurime (Ar-rim-ay): 2 guard with a great shot. Unfortunately broke her hand in practice last week and is out for at least another week.
• #11 Giedre (Ged (like "get" with a "d")- ruh): post player. Simply put, a BEAST. Can make any move and finish strong. Awesome rebounder. Also good English speaker that helps me out a lot.
• #12 Vita (Vi-tuh, same name as Mociute but pronounced differently): post player. Also in 30s but can mix it up inside and out. Smart, experienced player. Also married with a kid.
• #13 Marina (Ma-rin-uh): 2-3 guard with the best 3 pt shot. All out ballerrr. Definitely the Lithuanian version of Katie Paganelli, in sooo many ways! Also, loves American music and TV shows which has helped a lot.
• #14 Kristina (Kris-tin-uh): 6'9" lanky lefty. Plays like Bryce Husack, but personality reminds me of Devonna Smith. Younger, but has lots of potential.
• #15 Lina (Lin-uh, just like Aunt Lina): Post player about my size (but skinnier). Tough defender and finishes well. Goofy and always having a good time which reminds me of Mallory Eggert.
  

Also, there's a girl from Canada, Courtnay, who is playing for the Canadian National Team in the World Championships right now but she should be getting here at the beginning of October. She just graduated from Vermont and from what I hear is a pretty good guard. Her grandparents are from Lithuania too, but also like me, she doesn't really speak the language. We've actually been talking pretty often on Skype and Facebook and it'll be nice when she gets here to have another full-time English speaker to go through all this stuff with (even if she says "eh" a lot and spells words funky...its color, not colour! :) )

Anyways, there ya go. That's the team, at least from my perspective for now. There are a lot of other personality traits that I'm sure will come out in future blog entries, but this is a start. And in a nutshell, all the girls are extremely nice and helpful to me and they are all pretty darn good basketball players. By far the most talented group I've ever been a part of, so I can't wait to see how we come together and play this season!